


catalogs

by marit



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: I mean during the end, M/M, Post-Civil War, everything is sad, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 09:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6849613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marit/pseuds/marit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But he understands two things. He still cares about Steve more than is any good for either of them, the same as the two young men they were and the one of them who would do absolutely anything for the other to be happy and healthy. And Steve just wants comfort, the idea of his friend and the sway forward to get as close to that idea as possible. </p><p>(Wakanda, Pre-freezing.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	catalogs

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this quickly. Mistakes are the product of improper editing and I apologize greatly for them.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

It takes him a long time to notice. It’s oddly innocuous, the moment that does it in.

Steve’s hovering behind his shoulder in a spot that’s just too close but just far enough away that it’d be odd to mention it. It’d be normal if he were offering support, but Bucky’s not doing much more than staring at the results of some of his brain scans. He’s trying to remember each part as if by knowing exactly how everything looks he can somehow fix himself, even though for all that he can label each gyrus and sulcus and tell you what it’s associated with, he knows that’s not how it works. His ability to know the parts doesn’t mean it’s something he can fix. Or even that it’s fixable.

But he’s studying anyway, and behind his shoulder Steve is on the phone with Romanoff and Wilson at the same time, even though Wilson’s just across the building, and he’s growing tenser and tenser as each moment passes. If Bucky tried he could make out what they’re saying but he’s trying out this thing where he gives people their privacy and doesn’t constantly eavesdrop, so all he gets is the very little Steve is saying in response. It’s a lot of nodding that the other two can’t see, and some yes/no answers and one very abrupt and defensive sounding, “I know. I get that.” 

He’s not sure if it’s self-centred to think they’re talking about him, but he’s pretty sure they are. He’s not sure if he should be insulted that Steve’s doing it quite literally behind his back, but from the tightly controlled emotions rolling off of him, Bucky doesn’t think it was entirely intentional anyway. It was his phone that rang and not him that called them, after all. 

So he’s studying and Steve’s hovering and it takes him a moment to realize that Steve’s moved closer a bit, swayed forward slightly with his one arm across his body and hand tucked into the crook of the other elbow holding the phone to his ear, shoulders hunched in close and compact.

He turns his head and it must startle Steve because he abruptly steps away and stalks over to the wall to lean against it. He’s not fast enough for Bucky to miss his expression, though, the mixture of embarrassment and self-annoyance that flashes across his face for one brief moment before being tamped down. 

He turns back to the screens, but he’s not seeing them anymore. He’s thinking. It’s still not natural, piecing together human interactions to form a cohesive whole when they relate to himself and not to a mission. He’s so far out of practice that it’s not even fair to pretend he has the beginning foundations anymore. He tries, though, or at least he does where Steve’s concerned. He catalogs.

The first time Steve touched him outside of a fighting scenario: Normal. Fair after reuniting with your dead best friend. Perhaps the most restrained reunion touch available. A grasped shoulder, a bit hesitant and too firm all at once. The pressure of each finger on Steve’s left hand on his right shoulder, dampened through the coat and two shirts he had been wearing. A brief sense of camaraderie that he didn’t deserve. A strange feeling in his chest that didn’t belong. 

The time Steve grasped his shoulder and his hand lingered a touch too long, swept down the back of his right shoulder like his fingers were trying to keep the touch for as long as possible. A tingling down his spine that he knows didn’t show outwardly. The first time he wanted to lean back just enough to encourage the touch. 

The way he had looked on that plane flying north. Steve’s voice was calm and steady but his grip was harsh against the black of the stick. His skin was pale against his outfit. He looked back at Bucky too often. He wondered what it was like to abandon all your friends behind you. What it was like to fly a plane in the same direction you last crashed one. 

The sound of the shield hitting the ground. The pain that was rolling in waves through him. He was hazy, like everything was unreal. Steve was warm, maybe overly so. Stark’s breath heavy behind them, his voice harsh and hurt. The minute shaking in Steve’s body against his own. The way his fingers gripped Bucky too hard, a point of clarity. 

Steve writing a letter, his face scrunched up against some sort of emotion that Bucky didn’t like. Bucky sitting on a soft couch, a book about Wakanda in his lap. Steve sideways on the other end of the same couch, knees brought in to make him as small as possible. The give of the cushion under him. The awkward way the arm of it nudged his elbow forward into an uncomfortable angle. The shuffle of paper. Steve’s foot sliding ever closer, unconsciously, until it pushed just slightly into the side of Bucky’s thigh. His socks were dark blue. 

The feel of the thin medical mattress under his legs. The calm, deep voice of the doctor as she spoke of the chamber and its affects on his body. What it would do to go back in. The twitch of Steve’s fingers on the sheets where his hand rested near Bucky’s. The way he pulled away like he’d been caught when Bucky shifted. 

How he consistently stands too close. How he leaves his bedroom late at night after a nightmare if Bucky is nearby outside, but not if Bucky is in his own bedroom. The way he relaxes a bit when Wilson is near but even more if Bucky is. The relief that flits across his face when Bucky enters a room after having been gone awhile. 

The way Bucky does the same in too many ways to count. It’s not as worth thinking about, those things.

But he understands two things. He still cares about Steve more than is any good for either of them, the same as the two young men they were and the one of them who would do absolutely anything for the other to be happy and healthy. And Steve just wants comfort, the idea of his friend and the sway forward to get as close to that idea as possible. 

He looks at Steve, who is staring determined at a spot on the floor. He is still hunched, his shoulders tucked in like they can somehow protect him. It can’t be good for his back. His posture at the moment is atrocious. 

“All right?” Bucky asks, when Steve finally hangs up. He looks even more tense, if possible. He startles when Bucky talks though, and isn’t that something. 

“Yeah,” he says, a lie. “It’s--yeah.” He pushes off the wall, walks back to Bucky. Leaves a respectable distance. 

“Figure anything out?” he asks, determination and probably-faked optimism, as if Bucky has any ability to solve all their problems by staring at some brain scans. 

“No,” he answers, turning away from Steve again. It’s more unfriendly than he means it to be. It effectively cuts off the line of questioning. 

Steve just nods though, probably used to it by now. “We’ll figure out something,” he says, like he has too many times before, like through sheer repetition he can make it so. “We always do.”

 

 

T’Challa has set them up in an apartment that usually temporarily houses foreign delegates. As such, it is comfortable but not extravagant. 

Steve’s in the kitchen cooking. It’s separated from the rest of the living space by an island, which Bucky is perched at on a tall stool with a low back. He pokes at a tablet. Another article contemplating where Captain America might be hiding. 

Bucky likes cooking but he’s not yet entirely used to doing things one-handed, and the act of making a meal seems to calm Steve. The things he makes are simple and comfortable, although he’s adapted well to the different ingredients in Wakanda. 

“Natasha says I’ll have to leave Wakanda soon,” Steve says suddenly. He barely hesitates where he is cutting into an eggplant, a brief pause between one motion and the next that betrays how difficult it is for him to offer this information up. 

Bucky looks up but says nothing. Steve’s back is to him. 

“She says it’ll be safer for both of us. I’m more recognizable. It’s better if I--they’ll find me, eventually.” Bitterness tinging his voice. He moves the slice of eggplant, cuts into it from the other direction. The knife makes a satisfying sound against the wooden cutting board when he exerts more pressure than he needs to. 

“She isn’t wrong,” Bucky offers after a moment. 

“No, she isn’t.” Bitter still. Annoyed. He cuts too close to his finger, narrowly missing it. Bucky tries not to wince despite himself. Steve seems to notice he’s done it too, because he suddenly puts the knife down. He braces his hands on the countertop and leans forward, head bowed. 

“Sorry,” he says after a minute where Bucky stays quiet and watches the curve of his back. “I just--it feels like leaving you again.” 

Bucky lets the “again” lie because now is not the time to try to correct that line of thinking that has too many years to fester. Later, though. He makes a note to approach it later when Steve might be more willing to listen to it.

“It’s fine. I’ll be in the chamber.” It doesn’t come out reassuring like he wants it to be. It’s not, really, anyway. It just comes out flat. 

Steve’s shoulders flinch, just barely. He finally turns around. He looks hurt until he hides it, and Bucky can’t place why he would be. It feels like a failure. “That’s not the point,” Steve responds instead of anything that might be more helpful. What is the point, then? He doesn’t know.

He thinks of earlier in the day. Comfort. Care. 

“Do you remember Belgium?” he asks. 

Steve looks surprised and confused in turn. “What about it?” he asks. He sounds oddly hesitant, like it might be a trap of a question. 

“You had to stay back while the rest of us went ahead because the only way into the base was through the front and you were too recognizable. Couldn’t hide you in one of those Hydra uniforms we stole without you still looking out of place.” 

“I know what you’re trying--” 

Bucky cuts him off. “Phillips sent you and Dernier to France because he knew otherwise you’d just follow us right in at the first sign of trouble. You were so mad.” 

“I know, Buck, that’s--”

“But we all got back together in the end, right? Even though Jones somehow lost a boot and Morita had that huge cut down his leg, we all made it back together and were fine.”

Steve doesn’t interrupt this time, just looks at Bucky with eyes he can’t read. 

“This is just Belgium. It’ll be fine.” 

“I didn’t want to leave anyone behind,” Steve says, and Bucky hears what it really means.

“You didn’t. You aren’t.” It’s not enough but he doesn’t have more words, has to try to think too far ahead with each utterance to really make it better. 

“This is my decision. You need to go so that you can give us all more time. It’s not fair, but it’s safer. For the others too.” 

He hates saying it, and hurt flashes again across Steve’s face before disappearing again. Always covered, those emotions. It makes his chest ache for him, for all these things Steve takes on.

“It’ll be fine, Stevie,” and the nickname does what Bucky knew it would, makes something in Steve give way just enough for him to give in, his body slumping away from defensiveness and into a downtrodden acceptance. He looks at him until Steve’s forced to meet his eyes. “All right? It’ll be fine.” 

Steve finally nods, doesn’t say anything else. His grip on the counter is still harsh and when he moves one hand away there is a red line across the undersides of his fingers. He lets out a breath too fast, deflating. 

Bucky gives him a moment, then says, forced lightness, “Now finish making me my supper.” 

Steve huffs a laugh, weak but about all Bucky’s going to get at the moment. “Right. Sorry.” 

“It’s fine, Stevie,” he answers to the unspoken apology for everything else. He looks back down at the tablet and pushes the button to turn the screen back on. It’s cheap, using the nickname twice in so short a time, but they’ve both earned it at the moment, the brief way it reassures Steve. 

He lets go of the counter with his other hand and turns back around, back to Bucky again, and resumes cooking. Acceptance for now, maybe. 

 

 

They don’t hesitate long. There’s no point to it. 

“Why do they have a cryogenic chamber anyway?” Steve asks, like it only just occurred to him. He’s staring at the thing in question like it has mortally offended him. When he realizes Bucky’s looking he covers up the expression, though, tries to smile.

Bucky shrugs. “Most of the designs were in the leaked files. Guess they figured out the rest on their own.” He doesn’t say what he’s already searched for and didn’t find: the chair, thankfully, was not there. Too secret. Too carefully guarded. None of it digital.

Steve seems to accept that. His trust of T’Challa is wary but determined. He’s going along with it more because Bucky is, and Bucky is because he doesn’t see what other choices he has. Maybe this is the easy way out. Maybe he’s just avoiding it all. He’s not sure he wants to think about it too hard. 

He’s sitting on the bed. It is high enough that his feet dangle just above the floor. Everyone else is outside the room. Final meetings or whatever is they get up to. Giving them a bit of space. 

“I’ll be back,” Steve says abruptly, like he’s convincing both of them. 

Bucky wants to smooth out the lines around his eyes, relax the furrow of his mouth. Before he really understands he’s doing it--he blames the stress and uncertainty--he’s reaching out, his index finger barely a pressure on the spot between Steve’s eyes at the top of his nose. It succeeds in making Steve go a bit cross-eyed, something that he could perhaps find amusement in in other circumstances. 

Neither of them say anything. Steve’s still trying to stare at his finger like it’s not attached to a person he could look at for answers instead. 

He moves it down, slowly. Both of their eyes follow the movement. Steve’s barely breathing. Bucky’s trying not to breathe too much. 

He moves his finger until he can rest his whole hand along the line of Steve’s jaw. Steve’s eyes flutter slightly. He takes a shaky breath that Bucky echoes, and then he tugs him forward, gentle, careful, allowing Steve not to follow if he doesn’t want to. He steps, though. He lets Bucky guide until his hand instead slides around Steve’s head to pull it down, careful, until Steve takes the hint and wraps his arms around him. Because this is right. He knows now that he’s done it that this is what is correct. He moves his hand from Steve’s head to his back so that his elbow isn’t jabbing into Steve’s side. His hair is startlingly soft. His back feels strong, not that it could feel like anything else. Tense. 

“I’ll be back,” Steve repeats after a moment. His voice is rough. He doesn’t try to clear it, a concession Bucky wonders if he gives many people. 

“I know,” he says in response, simply. His voice feels loud in comparison to Steve’s muffled one. He turns his head slightly, and blond hair is almost ticklish against his lips. 

“This feels wrong.” It’s an admittance, hesitant.

“It’s what I want.” He’s not entirely sure that’s true. It’s simply the only thing he can think to do. He tried the other thing--living normally. He tried a home and neighbors and the simple pleasure of cooking. It backfired. Bucky will always have the threat in him until they figure out how to take it out, if they ever do, and he’s not sure he can live with that. It’s a risk he’s not willing to take. "It's what's right," he adds, as if that can make it better.

Steve sighs like he is letting something go in the air he breathes out. His body around Bucky relaxes, not all of the way but he thinks that might be too much to ask for. His head on Bucky’s left shoulder is heavy like he’s slowly collapsing his weight onto him. His shirt is soft under Bucky’s palm. He finds himself gripping it, suddenly not wanting to let go. 

Steve makes a small sound, sad and soft, and then pulls away. His eyes are bright and red but he’s not crying. He runs a hand through his hair. Over his face. His eyes dart around the room, hesitating very briefly on each exit point. Bucky wants to reach again but resists. 

“We should let the doctors back in,” Steve says. 

“Don’t--” Bucky starts and then stops. He doesn’t know how to end that sentence. There are too many ways. Don’t do anything too risky. Don’t try to do this alone. Don’t give yourself in. Don’t be stupid. Don’t take this on yourself. Don’t think this is your fault. 

He clears his throat, changes direction. “You’ll be back.” They will see one another again. Neither of them will be gone permanently. 

Strangely, that seems to work. Steve’s body relaxes again infinitesimally. His eyes move back to meet Bucky’s. 

“Yeah. I will.” He sounds fond and sad all in one. He steps forward into Bucky’s space again. His knees push against the front of Bucky’s legs. The edge of the bed pushes against the back, a counterpoint. His hands grip Bucky’s shoulders too hard, no care for the difference of the left. He leans down until their foreheads are touching. His eyes are closed. Bucky closes his too because looking from this close hurts. He keeps his hand where it is, gripping into the bed. He doesn’t dare move. He doesn’t want the moment to break.

They breathe. Steve says nothing so Bucky doesn’t either. His hand shifts, slides from Bucky’s right shoulder to the side of his neck and settles there, warm and gentle. It’s his pulse, Bucky realizes after a moment. Steve is taking his pulse.

After what feels like a long time but isn’t long enough, Steve says, quiet, “Okay. Okay.” 

He doesn’t move, like he isn’t listening to himself, and then he does, carefully. He pulls away. The hand on his neck lingers. When Bucky opens his eyes, Steve’s studying his face. He smiles a bit, careful. 

There is nothing to say so they are quiet. With one last squeeze where Bucky’s neck curves into his shoulder, Steve pulls away that last bit. His thumb sweeps across Bucky’s throat, and he has to swallow down all of the words that want to fall out of his mouth. All of the things he wants to say, has wanted to say his whole life but hasn’t been able to. 

He tries to smile instead, and must succeed at least a bit because Steve’s eyes go softer, if possible. Then he nods and walks away, goes to the door to talk to the doctors and scientists and whoever else needs to be there. 

He has to reassure Steve again in the end, but it lacks the restrained but unhidden anxiety of the previous times. 

As it begins, he thinks of the market. He thinks of the elderly couple the floor below, Mrs. Dumitru who told him they appreciated his light step. He thinks of Steve, out of place in that kitchen in Romania, his hand warm on his neck. Steady and strong. 

He catalogs. The material is hard against his head. His pants are soft against the skin of his legs. The chamber is cold on his feet before it’s meant to be. The sky outside the windows outside the chamber is a comforting blue with wispy clouds. Steve is there. He is calm. They are both calm. This will be fine. He will be back.


End file.
